The Democracy Demo(n)

Who doesn’t love Meryl Streep as an actress, but this time, even though she was on the stage, she was not acting. Even if she had rehearsed, she seemed totally natural. Maybe because she wanted to get her point across, and I am sure many of us thank her for doing that. While I listened to her speech, I realised why we are so different inspite of being the largest democracy. There are those people who say that US and India cannot and should not be compared because US started industrialising 200 years back, etc etc. Agreed. But what’s democracy got to do with that? So it should be fair to compare the democratic attitudes in India and US.

We, the people of India, are ultimately responsible for electing the Prime Minister, and indirectly, for electing the President. Would anyone in India ever rise to give voice to his or her opinion against the Prime Minister or the President? Of course, many people would say that Streep is an actress and she can get away with voicing her opinion, but the truth is, being an actress only adds more responsibility on her shoulders. When it comes to criticising something or someone within reasonable limits, everyone from a pauper to an actor stands on the same page in our country, and that’s unfortunate. If actors are really influential, it makes sense for them to talk about things. After all, actors are citizens too. When somebody wants to take a stand for someone, he or she is suppressed in this country. As Emma Stone said, “hope and creativity are the most important things in this world”. Who would want to keep up hope in a scenario like ours?

Atleast Americans have a right to exercise their right to freedom in the literal sense, and against a President-elect. Here, I will probably have to put some alphanumeric symbols in my blog posts in case I did not want a certain political party in Maharashtra to put me behind bars. My hypocrisy would then speak volumes about the kind of democracy we live in.

My favourite words from her speech-“take your broken heart, make it into art”. It is high time to tell our rulers to let atleast creativity prevail, even if hope cannot survive.